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An Officer Down.
"Bare-bones" sits across his desk from me. The light from the Chicago night, casts a bluish neon glow across his mug and his desk. He has the blinds open and his back to the window, daring someone to take a shot at him. Me? I woulda sat somewhere else, if it were my office. But, then again, someone would have a lot of sand to take a shot at the sargeants back. No matter how big a target it is.
Bare-bones rests his scarred, knuckled hands on his desk and breathes in heavy and quick. Just like the prizefighter that he used ta be. A quick breath in, just before he starts plugging away at some poor bastard. Right now, that poor bastard is me.
"This ain't gonna work, Calvin. What yer doin' here, it just ain't gonna work!" says Bare-bones. "I mean, Christ, yer spendin' yer nights harassin' the new District Attorney. Trompin' in his petunias and whatnot. How did you think this was all gonna end?"
I don't say a word. I wanna see where he's goin' with this.
"I got a call on the blower from Meehill. He tells me that someone has been talkin' to the rags about that screwup with his art shipment. That this 'anonymous source within the police department' is intimately familiar with Meehill's business practices and apparently has a beef with him. It's gotta be you, Calvin. Everybody in this town knows how much you hate Meehill."
"Meathead."
"What did you say?" I can see the thick, italian hair on his forearms bristle. He's just five words away from leaping across that fine, old, mahogany desk at me. His jaw locks in place, ready for the fight. "What did you call me?"
"I called the D.A., Meathead. That's what I think of him. His head. It looks like a hock of ham to me."
Bare-bones visibly relaxes in his seat. He leans back in his chair and runs his fingers through the wee stubble of his hair. I hear a choking sound that I realize is Bare-bones chuckling a little bit.
"Calvin. You can't go around sayin' stuff like that. I mean, it's all right in here. It's just you and me, but if the Polak or the BumbleBee heard you yappin', like that, I would have to hear about it. Are you talkin' to the Polak or the Bee?"
"Me and the Polak ain't speakin' to each other anymore. I heard a rumor that he's queer for Meathead. Don't print nothin' that the Meathead don't approve of. I DO talk to the Bee, though. He's kinda dumb and he can't hold a train of thought to save his life. But he ain't the Polak and somedays, I like him, just for that fact." That's probably the most I've said about either of those two printing press jockeys outloud. I'm usually not one for giving speeches. "Are we done here, Bare-bones?"
"I wish. We ain't done here by a long shot." he takes a bottle of rotgut out of a desk drawer and pours two tumblers full. I notice that mine has four fingers of hootch in it. His has two. He's loosenin' me up for something. "Meehill ain't the only one that is squaking about you. I got a call from Rampskin, too. He says that you roughed him up, in a dive, somewheres. Is that true?"
"Rampskin is a nance."
"That AIN'T what I asked you!" Bare-bones slams his fist on his desk. The hula girl doll that sits on the corner of his desk starts swayin' back and forth. For a minute, neither of us says anythin' at all. He watches me. I watch the hula girl, slowly wind down her dance. When she's done, I look over at him and speak.
"Yeah, I slapped him around a bit. He's got a big mouth. Gets him in trouble. He called me a fascist and un-American. So, I played him a little chin music for a bit. He was blotto. I didn't think he would remember that it was me, who gave him the Broderick."
"Well, he did. And he's out for blood. Yours, actually." Bare-bones takes his first pull off of his glass. Mine was empty before Little Miss Hey-I-wanna-lei-ya finished her little shimmy dance.
"Come on, Bare-bones. He's the damned treasurer! How much pull does he have?"
"Enough. At least, enough to get what he wants done. I'm bustin' ya back to leiutenant. You'll take a pay cut and you can expect to get a beat shift. You better polish the buttons on your blues. You're back on the beat." He throws back the rest of his drink and then pulls up the bottle to refill us both. He's waitin' to see what I will do. He ain't smilin' at me. This ain't any fun for him, either.
I can feel the anger risin' in my chest. Not at Bare-bones. When you get past all the growlin' and bitin', he's a pal. Down at Sam's, We used to drink out of the same bottle. Heck, his gal Wanda kisses me on the cheek every time I see her. We're close, is all I'm sayin'.
The anger that I'm feelin', though is a familiar one. It's for Meehill, the District Attorney and that wool-suited weasel, Rampskin. Neither one of those two highbinders has spent any time on the streets, unless it's to walk from the open door of their limo's into their fancy, high-rise apartments or City Hall. They're patsies. Nancies. Glad-ragged Daisies. And I could make Picasso's out of their faces in ten minutes, if I wanted to.
And that's when I see the microphone hidden amongst the tubes of the radiator and I know that there's more than just the two of us, sitting in this office. And that maybe Bare-bones and I aren't as close as I thought we were. I think I know the Chinese Angle, here.
"Keep thinkin' like that and you'll get a headache" says Bare-bones. His eyes are like ball bearings. Small, grey, metal. They don't give nothin' away. I'm suddenly glad that I ain't bettin' against them at a poker table.
"Is that the way you want it to be?" I says. I'm giving him a way out.
"That's the way that it is going to be. Whether I want it or not."
I stand up and lower the brim of my fedora.
"Well, then you'll be needin' this." I reach into my pocket and pull out my shield. I flip it open so that Bare-bones can see what I'm up to. His eyes widen. He's gettin' the picture. Slowly, but he IS gettin' it. I drop my buzzer into his trashbin. I unholster my gun, I open the chamber and let the bullets slide out, also into the trashbin.
"Now, come on, Calvin. Don't be a bunny." he says quietly. I close the chamber of my gun and set it down on his desk.
"You gonna turn over your roscoe's too?" he asks.
"Nah. Why should I? I paid for them, myself. And I got a legal license for them. This piece of junk is precinct issue." The pistol drops on his desk with a thud. I reach in my pocket and pull out my callbox key. I keep it on a key ring with a leather fob. Stamped onto the leather fob is an imprint of the Sherrif's badge from Deadwood, North Dakota. From the old west. I'd be lyin' if I tried to say that I didn't see myself as an old west sherrif sometimes. I hold it up taught and with one hard yank, the chain breaks and i drop the key into the trashbin too. The fob goes back in my pocket.
"You know that when this is done, there ain't no comin' back." says Bare-bones. Maybe he's offerin' me a way out, now.
"Let's hope so." I take up by glass of scotch and drain it all in one hard pull. "Thanks for the drink, Bare-bones. But you ought to not keep booze in your office, it attracts bugs." And I pick up the hula girl and fling it at the radiator bug as hard as I can. Call me lucky, but it's a dead shot, knocking the mic backwards through the radiator and clattering to the ground. I smile to think about the explosion of electronic feedback that some poor schmuck just caught full blast in his eardrums. If I was real lucky, Rampskin or the D.A. just got an ear full of Hell.
Bare-bones leaps up and starts bellowin' at me, my lovely, sainted mother and my ancestors. He's just blowin' off steam though. He don't like bein' caught with a bug in his office. Normally, he ain't no entomologist.
I walk over to the elevator and ask the kid who works in there to "get me oughta this Clubhouse." Behind me, I can hear Bare-bones yellin' and pullin' down his file cabinets in a full blown hissy fit. I flip the kid a dime and toussle his hair for him. I'm feelin' pretty good actually. Quittin' the force should've been a bum play, but it doesn't feel like one. It feels like the first smart thing I done in a long while.
And that's how I stopped bein' a cop and started bein' the lousy private eye that I am today. Pass me the beernuts, wontcha?
The Broken Jade Gambit: A Calvin Mann Mystery continues in Chapter 4: Worked Over. Read it here.
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